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中国简介的部分文字稿（英文版）Holidays and Festivals in ChinaBesides National Day (October 1st) and International Labour Day (May 1st), which are the two major official holidays celebrated all over the country. There are many other traditional holidays and festivals in China.The Spring Festival(Chinese New Year’s Day) falls on the first day of the first month on the Chinese lunar calendar(usually in January or February of the solar calendar), and the day before it is Chinese New Year’s Eve. The Han people and other ethnic minorities in China all celebrate the Spring Festival, with such activities as setting off firecrackers , pasting Chunlian (couplets matching each other in sound and meaning, written on red paper ) on the door, extending New Year’s greetings to each other, and performing the yangge (literally, “rice seedling song”) dance and the lion dance.The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the Yuanxiao Festival, also known as the Lantern Festival. The special food for this festival day is called Yuanxiao , a ball-shaped dumpling made of glutinous rice flour with sweet sesame re meat stuffing.QingMing (Clear and Bright) Festival is on the fourth or fifth day of April. This is the time of year when people go out to the tombs and memorials to pay tribute to the dearly departed and national heroes.DuanWu or the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth Lunar month (June of the solar calendar). This is a festival dedicated to the memory of Qu Yuan, The great poet-statesman from the state of Chu during the Warring States Period (474-221 B.C.) Legend has it that after Qu Yuan drowned himself in protest against the corrupt government of Chu’s king, people feared that Qu Yuan’s body might be eaten by the fish in the river. So they wrapped up glutinous rice with bamboo leaves, and taking these dumplings, they raced each other in their boats to the place where QuYuan had died. They threw the dumplings into the river to feed the fish, so as to keep Qu Yuan’s body from harm. Later, the act of wrapping glutinous rice in bamboo leaves evolved into the tradition of preparing a special food called zongzi for this festival. The boat race to save Qu Yuan’s body was the origin of the Dragon boat race, which is held on this day, every year.The Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month (September of the solar calendar), is also known as Family Reunion Day. This is a time when the whole family enjoys getting together to look at the full moon, and to eat delicious moon cakes.Classical Chinese Poetry, Prose, and NovelsClassical Chinese literature has a history as long as the literary histories of Greek, Arabic, and Sanskirit languages. Poetry is the most developed genre of classical Chinese literature. The oldest collection of Chinese poetry, The Book of Songs, contains three hundred and five poems dating from the eleventh century B.C. to the sixth century B.C.. The poems of Qu Yuan, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, and Su Shi represent the highest achievements in this genre.Chinese prose has a history just as long as poetry. The earliest prose consists of historical texts dating back to the eleventh century B.C.. These are followed by prose pieces representing various schools of thought. During the Tang and Song dynasties, as well as in the Qing Dynasty, a great number of finely written prose pieces were produced.Novels, especially those written by known authors, appeared fairly late in China. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber are the four most famous classical Chinese novels.The Education System of ChinaThe educational system of China consists of basic education, vocational and technical education, higher education, and adult education. Basic education refers to pre-school, primary, and general secondary education.Chinese children usually start their schooling at the age of six or seven. They spend six years in elementary school. After that, they enter junior middle school to study for three more years. These nine years of schooling are generally referred to “nine-year compulsory education”, and are made universal in most parts of China.After graduating from junior middle school, many students enter senior middle school, whereas some choose to go to specialized secondary school or vocational secondary school (generally called “vocational senior middle school” ). The period of study for both types of school is three years. After graduating , students may seek employment, or they may choose to continue their studies at the higher education level.The length of schooling for a university education is usually four years, but some programs (medicine, for instance) require five years of study. At the time of graduation, if a student meets all the academic requirements, and is given the authorization of the state, a bachelor’s degree is conferred upon him or her by the university. After graduating from the university, one may opt for further studies toward master’s degrees. Each degree usually takes three years, now two years to obtain. Like most universities in the world, Chinese universities offer three academic degrees, i.e. the bachelor’s, the master’s, and the doctorate.Sports in ChinaChina ha s traditional sports such as martial arts, wrestling, qigong, and high-swinging. Among these, martial arts is also called “Chinese gongfu” by foreigners. The main function of Chinese martial arts is to improve one’s health and increase one’s strength.Modern sports started very late in China, but developed very rapidly. China’s first world record was established by the weight lifter, Chen Jingkai, in 1956. Table tennis, badminton, gymnastics, diving, and middle and long-distance races are China’s strongest sports. In the World Championships of Table Tennis in 1982, China won all the first and second place titles. In the 1980’s , the Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team won the championship five times in a row in the World Cup Competition and other international competitions. China achieved the worldwide third-place ranking at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, for both the number of gold medals they won and their total number of overall medals. In 2004 Athens Olympic Games, America got 103 medals including 35 gold medals, Russia got 92 medals including 27 gold medals, China got 63 medals including 32 gold medals. But they are main focus on the Table tennis , badmintaon, diving, shooting, weight-lifting. Everyone cheers for the gold medal By Liu Xiang of Jumping hurdle. Up to now, Chinese athletes have won 1317 world champions, setting 1026 world records.In 2008, the twenty-ninth Olympic Games will be held in Beijing, The capital of China.Eastern and Western Regions of ChinaChina is a huge country. Its land area total 9.6 million square kilometers, which makes it the third-largest country in the world, behind only Russia and Canada.Generally speaking, the western region of China is higher than the eastern region. Mountainous regions occupy over two-thirds of the total land area; plains account for less than one-third and are main in the east.Relatively speaking, the geographical and climatic conditions are fairly good in the eastern region. For historical reasons, the vast majority of Chinese population live in the east. China’s agricultural, industrial, economic, and financial activities are also mostly concentrated in this area. Therefore, the level of development in the east far surpasses that of the west.China has just started to develop its western regions. With its vast territory and abundance of resources, the west has a very promising future.Transportation in ChinaThe Chinese transportation industry has developed rapidly since the economic reforms. By late 1997, the total national railroad network comprised 57566 km The network has expanded to reach every province, every region, and every cities. All the cities in the country have access to railways. The Qinghai-Tibet railway is now under construction. It will be opened at the end of this year.In 1997 the total length of roads was 1.2 million kilometers. Roads have expanded to all cities and countries throughout the country, with a coverage of 98% of townships(xiang ,乡) and 80% of villages. Modern highway is 19 thousand kilometers, ranking the second in the world.There were a total of 967 commercial passenger airline routes in 1997, which was approximately a seven-fold increase from 1978.Dynasties in ChinaThe Title of a Dynasty Years五帝（Wudi）Five Lords Around the 26th century B.C. to around the end of the 22nd century or the beginning of the 21st century B.C.夏（Xia）Xia Dynasty Around the end of the 22nd century ot the beginning of the 21st century B.C. to around the 17th century B.C.商（Shang）Shang Dynasty Around the beginning of the 17th century B.C. to around the 11th century B.C.周（Zhou）Zhou Dynasty Around the 11th century B.C. to 256 B.C.秦（Qin）Qin Dynasty 221 B.C to 206 B.C汉（Han）Han Dynasty 206 B.C. to 220 A.D.三国（Sanguo）Three Kingdoms 220 to 280晋（Jin）Jin Dynasty 265 to 420南北朝（Nan-Beichao）Northern and Southern Dynasty 420 to 589隋（Sui）Sui Dynasty 581 to 618唐（Tang ）Tang Dynasty 618 to 907五代（Wudai） Five Dynasties 907 to 960宋（Song）Song Dynasty 960 to 1279元（Yuan）Yuan Dynasty 1206 to 1368明（Ming）Ming Dynasty 1368 to 1644清（Qing）Qing Dynasty 1616 to 1911民国（Minguo）The time of Minguo 1911 to 1915军阀统治抗日战争解放战争(Warlords government and Anti-Japanese War and Revolutionary War 1915 to 1949中国人民共和国（Zhong hua ren min gong he guo）The People’s Republic of China 1949 to todayChinese CharactersI. Methods of construction Chinese charactersWhen constructing Chinese characters, certain rules are followed in the combination of sound, structure and meaning. Though the forms of modern characters are frequently very different from these ancient ones, Chinese characters still maintain the characteristics of a logographic writing system. Therefore, understanding the process by which Chinese characters are formed will facilitate learning them.1. Pictographic method (象形法)：This method of construction depicts either the whole image or the partial characteristic of an object. It is the original method of forming characters.a. Depicting the whole image of the object. For example:人，大，目，见，口，牙，耳，心，手，足，女，木，水，火，土，丁，刀，日，月，井，田，子，儿，工，弓，衣，车，舟，门，户，虫，马，立。b. Depicting a characteristic of the object. For example:母，羊，牛，犬，身。c. Depicting both the object and other associated things. For example:果，天，匕，见。In antiquity, these single-component characters, which we have already learned, were originally pictographic. Nowadays, they are no longer very pictographic but are similar to codes. However, when they are used as the basic components for multicomponent characters, the fact that they maintain either their original sounds or meanings certainly helps our understanding of the latter.2. Ideographic method(指示法): This is a method in which new characters are created by adding signs to conventional symbols and pictographs. There is only a small number of characters that fall under this category, and they are basically of two types:a. Those created on a basis of the conventional symbols established in primitive times. For example: 一，二，三，四，五，六，七，八。b. Those created by adding indicative signs to pictographs. For example: 刃，本，早，上，中，下。3. Associative method (会意法)：This method of construction combines two or more words to create a new word with a new meaning, which is derived from the association of the original meanings of all the individual components. For example, “从” is constructed by placing one “person” after another, to signify the meaning “ to fellow”. We have learned the following characters in this category:林，比，北，明，信，友，孙，多，步，出，看，拿，坐，休，分，品。4. Phonetic loan method (假借法)：This method uses the shape and sound of a readily available character to represent another word that has the same sound. For example, the original meaning of “斤” was “axe”; it is now borrowed as a measure word to represent “ a unit of weight”, which has the same sound. “我” was originally used to represent a type of weapon; now it is used to write the person pronoun. “来” originally meant “wheat”; it is now borrowed to mean “come”, because the sounds were the same in the ancient times. All foreign words borrowed through transliteration are applications of the phonetic loan method. For example: “沙发”(sofa) “可乐” (coke),etc.5. The pictophonetic method (形声法)：The majority of Chinese characters are “pictophonetic” . Most consist of one component indicating the sound of the character, the phonetic, combined with one semantic component, the radical, which shows the category o f meaning to which the character belongs. The podtophonetic characters fall into several categories:a. In its basic form, a pictophonetic character is constructed by placing the cimponent indicating the sound on the right side and the component indicating the meaning on the left side. For example: 饭，姑，妈，吗，吧，锻，机，快，块，理，们，哪，娜，请，情，物，泳，钟，洲，住，俑，懂，把，馆，证，慢，职，极，样，幅，像，虾，衬，护，试。b. In this method, a character is formed by placing the component indicating the sound on the left side and the component indicating the meaning on the right side. For example: 放，翻，刚，故，和，剧，鸭，瓶，颜，邮。c. In this method , a character is formed by placing the component indicating meaning on the top, and the component indicating sound at the bottom. For example: 花，寄，焦，篇，苹，舍，药。d. In this method, a character is formed by placing the component indicating the meaning at the bottom, and the component indicating the sound on the top. For example: 棒，婆，华，照，您，愿。e. In this method, a character is formed by placing the component indicating the meaning inside, and the component indicating the sound outside. For example: 问，闷，闻。There are very few characters of this type.f. In this method, a character is formed by placing the component indicating the meaning outside, and the component indicating the sound inside. For example: 园，房，府，厅，进，历，座，裹。II. Differentiating homophones(同音字)There are only 1300 meaningful phonetic syllables with tones in the common speech of modern Chinese, but there are 3500 Chinese characters in common use. As a result, it is not usual that some characters may have the same pronunciation. For example, the characters “游，邮，油” are pronounced you, and they are distinguished from one another only by their written forms. Therefore, when we study homophone tic(同音字) characters, we must learn to distinguish them by comparing them in terms of form, meaning and word combinations. For example, “导游” cannot be written as “导油” or “导邮”, and “游泳” cannot be written as “油泳” or “邮泳”.III. Distinguishing characters with similar formsMany Chinese characters have similar forms. To distinguish them, one must compare the shape, number, and combination of strokes, and position of components in each character. For example:a. 儿—几 石—右 刀--力 入—人b. 犬—太 王—壬 土—士 夫—天c. 练—炼 孩—该 第—弟 泰—奏d. 放—访 明—朋 错—借 请—情